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Aviation glossary

CVR

Cockpit Voice Recorder · Also: cockpit voice recorder

Safety

Flight recorder that captures the pilots’ voices, radio communications and flight deck sounds, from aural warnings to engine noise.

What it is

It is the other ‘black box’. It records several channels at once: each pilot’s microphone, radio and interphone communications, and an area microphone that picks up everything audible on the flight deck, from aural alerts to the click of a switch or the sound of the engines. It records on a loop, overwriting the oldest material.

For decades it kept only the last 30 minutes, later two hours; ICAO now requires 25 hours on newly built large aircraft, so that information about an event early in a long flight is not lost. Combined with the FDR, it shows not only what the aircraft did but what the crew perceived and decided.

Because of its private nature, the recording is strictly protected: Annex 13 restricts its use to the investigation, and many countries prohibit the release of the audio by law. Reports transcribe only the excerpts needed to understand the occurrence.

Related terms

Flight recordersCrash-protected units that record flight data and flight deck sounds so that investigators can reconstruct what happened during an occurrence. FDRFlight recorder that continuously logs hundreds of aircraft parameters, such as altitude, airspeed, heading, control positions and engine thrust. Flight deckForward compartment from which the pilots fly the aircraft and manage its systems, navigation and communications. ICAO Annex 13ICAO’s international standard setting out how civil aviation accidents and incidents are investigated, with the sole aim of preventing future ones.
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This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). CVR. Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/cvr

MLA

“CVR.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/cvr. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “CVR.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/cvr.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) CVR. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/cvr (Accessed: 17 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_cvr,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{CVR}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/cvr},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/cvr}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-17},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-17}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/cvr |title=CVR |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-17 |language=en}}

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